Politicians have long assayed education in terms of economic value. In 1994, for example, Bill Clinton told educators that they were not providing youth with the practical skills they would need for jobs. In 2015, Margaret Spellings, U.S. Secretary of Education under George W. Bush, stressed the importance of accountability in education, so that “taxpayers know what they are getting for their money” and students will be well prepared to enter the “global marketplace,” where they will be “competing with students all over the world.” Just this year, an article in Foreign Affairs deems “America’s education crisis” a “national security threat,” in part because a nation that cannot compete economically will lack the means to secure its borders against its more prosperous rivals.
On these terms, individual Americans are best understood as producers and consumers, and the American people constitute nothing so much as a workforce. The success or failure of the American experiment hinges above all on America’s economic fortunes—especially how its prosperity compares with that of other nations. Even higher education institutions themselves have bet the farm on an educational rationale grounded in economic utility. For example, the Chronicle of Higher Education recently released its report, “The Future of Work: How Colleges Can Prepare Students for the Jobs Ahead,” implying that job preparation is the principal purpose of colleges and universities.
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